Shutdown Theater

Any other day, these five parking places pictured below are available for use on the George Washington Parkway near Washington D.C. The GW Parkway is a national park. There is no fee to park in them. There are no National Park Service employees who do anything at all with them. But not today. Shutdown Theatre is playing nationwide, and the barricades are props.

Today the barricades went up. Unlike any other day, today National Park Service employees had to go to these parking places and erect barricades. More time, energy and money was spent erecting barricades to create phony drama surrounding the shutdown than is spent on a normal day. Without such theatre, most Americans might not even notice that the federal government has shut down.